Haley Stevens: “As the Senator from Arkansas is aware, the bill now before the Senate does contain emergency appropriations for both…”

“As the Senator from Arkansas is aware, the bill now before the Senate does contain emergency appropriations for both defense and domestic emergencies. As such, those appropriations have not been offset. I agree with the Senator's understanding that when offsets are required, the defense accounts must pay for defense appropriations, the nondefense must pay for nondefense appropriations. And that would comply with the so-called walls that exist between defense and nondefense spending. As I understand the situation, should we bring back a bill that has defense appropriations which are offset with reductions in nondefense accounts, the Budget Act would treat the defense funds to be over the cap that exists for 1998 and would not allow the treatment of the nondefense offsets to reduce that amount down below the cap. I call attention to the fact that our committee is the only committee that is subject to the point of order under the Budget Act. The House can propose whatever it wants to propose, but should we bring such a bill back to the Senate floor, it would be subject to a point of order, and it would certainly not be my intention to do that. Furthermore, as the Senator knows, it has already been indicated that the budget, the account for defense, has already been rescored and is $22 million over the cap now, which we will have to deal with later. But this bill is not over the cap. The defense account is over the cap before this bill.”